I am really amazed what you guys at crate made out of this engine and the game you created. I think every engine is setting restictions to the progress in game development. I just hope that you guys are still in love with what you made out of this engine and that it is still fun to work with it.
To be honest: Yes, I thought every new engine was built from scratch. I didn’t know that they’re just iterations of older ones.
Thank you for your reply(ies)!
Is unreal even good for isometric perspective games? I was told Unity was the way to go for Isometric games
Also, even for Grim Dawn II it seems (unless I am mistaken) they plan to update the existing engine rather than make a new one. Which kinda makes sense since it already does what they want it to. I know of one or two game RPGs that tanked due to custom engines but they’re too obscure, the most prominent example that comes to mind would be PoE. From what I’ve been told their engine still causes a lot of problems
Having actually played PoE since the Beta days, their engine isn’t any worse than Diablo’s engine, or any other game I’ve played. Every engine has issues, it’s the nature of technology. 
And, as always, people’s machines also play a factor in these sorts of things.
Basically, if you make your own engine (I heard TQ’s engine was made by the creators of the game, you can correct me if I am wrong) and you still have the files, the source code, you can always make a good or perfect (for a particular team) engine from a bad/messy one. If you compare Titan Quest and Grim Dawn, they’re basically the same (gameplay wise!), GD just has better graphics and additional features like damage conversion. So, basically, they use an old engine that has been upgraded. If they will keep the engine updated (if there’s a need for that), the engine will always be “new and better than any other” (for them). Grim Dawn COULD not have some features if they used another engine, because that particular engine would not support that.
For the end, a little quote one game developer made: “If you want to make a game, and you’re not sure if a particular engine will support what you wanna do in your game, build a new engine, even if it would be only for one game - we have to make that game special, not repetitive.” With “repetitive game” he meant two different games, but the same gameplay (for example Gothic and Gothic 2 or Cultures 2, 3 ,4).
Another major factor is that we didn’t just get the engine, we got the entire code base, which saved a massive amount of time / money because we didn’t have to recreate an entire ARPG gameplay, feature set and tools from scratch.
Even if you license a commercial engine, you still have a ton of work to do before you have any semblance of a game - unless what you’re making is very similar to what that engine was created to do. If you’re using Unreal to make a Gears of War clone, then you’d already have native support for a lot of the gameplay you wanted to create. If you’re making an ARPG, you’re not starting with much besides and engine and then you have to sift through or even try to rework existing code that is irrelevant to your game or not suited for it. Even the way levels are made in Unreal is not great for the way we wanted to build GD, so we’d either have to figure out how to work with it or create a new level editor and terrain system.
We’d still have to do a bunch of work before we could even click on the ground and make a character run around in an isometric view. Then you need to add loot mechanics, player inventory, skills, a skill system, combat mechanics and formulas… basically all the things that make an ARPG.
Starting with the TQ engine, we have everything, in terms of programming, we need to make a game with all the gameplay, features and UI of TQ. Then it’s just a question of what we want to improve, add or remove. We’ve reworked huge portions of both the engine and game. On the engine side, we recently rewrote the renderer from scratch and previously replaced the physics engine, pathing engine, shader model, sound engine, added post effects, etc. The only thing really limiting us from replacing all of the engine components over time is that it has to support the art we’ve already created and we’re sort of obligated to support older versions of directX because we supported them with the initial release and people running older systems wouldn’t be able to play if we didn’t.
Another issue is that a lot of what people interpret as being the look of the engine is actually the look of the art itself and how it was made. We started working on GD 8 years ago now and expectations for the size of texture resolutions and triangles on models was lower than they are today. A lot of what has improved with the look of the game over the years is just us updating art / redoing textures.
The thing that might have the biggest visual impact now would be to redo lighting and the way materials are rendered but that isn’t really feasible unless we move on to GD2 and leave all this current art behind. If we go on to GD2 and no longer have to support older DX version or existing art, then we’d be free to make bigger updates to the engine.
Like Kamil said, the date an engine was originally created is sort of irrelevant since you can continually update it and eventually replace every part of it.
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half-life 3 confirmed. :rolleyes:
You left out two important words in your quote: “unless” and “if”! 
i happen to think mine was a pretty faithful interpretation of the source material. 
Would it be thinkable to have a separate GD dx9 and a GD dx11 version, or would it be to maintenance intense to have 2 separate game versions? The games would remain the same beside the lightning and material rendering. Furthermore the dx11 version can have ongoing engine upgrades and would be featured on XBox One. These engine upgrade can then find the way into GD 2 in case that will be planed in future.
There might be a lot I did not take into account.
Are you saying that PoE tanked because of its engine?
Well, just look at the most recent examples of isometric games and guess for yourself. Unity is the obvious choice with Pillars of Eternity, but I’d have to say the Divinity 2.0 engine is far superior, but that could be just because they built their own engine to suit their game so it works seamlessly.
Personally, I’m glad we have a variety when it comes to different engines. This way you don’t see identical clones with different plots and spell animations.
Thank you Medierra for that detailed response. #PerfectAnswer
(Really cool how you guys keep in touch with the community btw.)
I’ve heard that the drawback with “this engine” (whatever “this” means in light of what has been said above) is that with it, movement skills which do not target an enemy but rather a space on the ground cannot be implemented. Is this accurate? I’ve heard that this is the reason that they do not exist in this game, it is a constraint of the engine.
If this should prove to be accurate, I do hope that the engine could be modified or updated or changed for GD2. That is one very clear advantage, to me, that Path of Exile has. (I really find that game very, very good, and if it were playable without internet I would find it at least as good and perhaps in some ways superior to GD, but of course only in some ways.)
Yes and no.
There is ONE movement skill that doesn’t require a target, a blink, that works without a target but it couldn’t work in GD (without mods) because it allows you to bypass all sorts of obstacles. It’s more of a dev tool than anything.
Dynamite? No need, warp over that barrier.
Scrap? Don’t bother building that bridge dude, just blink across.
Interesting cliff? Yeah its ok, once you teleport down there good luck getting out.
Yeah, the teleport skill that exists lets you teleport ANYWHERE. You can add a cooldown, you can kinda limit the range for it, but if you limit a teleport like that, why have one at all?
So, yes, teleport skills can work, but the problem is the engine doesn’t really have good ways to limit your movement with said skill so it’s not really viable. A jump/roll atm isn’t possible, there is no template or animation possible for that.
To make these things work, it would require some engine upgrades for sure.
Originally Posted by medierra View Post
[…] we move on to GD2 and […] we go on to GD2 […]
My 50 cents on this ( Even tho it’s off-topic ) is that I hope Grim Dawn 2 never happens, I really don’t think I am the only one. I would love to see Grim dawn cover the whole world map and become the WoW of ARPGs. Packed with all the stuff we already love.
I want the game to keep going. No sense in stopping something your making money and yeah - I respect working on the same project for a while gets really boring. However, most of us have the same job we to go to everyday and just deal with it so I don’t know what else to say lol ¯_(ツ)_/¯
In contrast - I’m all in favor for GD2; but start by re-creating GD1 in a sexy new DirectX15 engine. And then expand to cover the whole world
I think the current Grim Dawn has a lot of possibilities for expansion; starting over with a new engine etc I’m not so sure about.
If they are going to start over, then do something new; but rehashing GD?
The current game can be developed and expanded incrementally as long as there is a player base willing to buy the expansions. I’m thinking of the kind of development cycle that Paradox games go through; or Firaxis; or Warcraft as someone else mentioned above.
Considering the limitations you have to deal with, I’d say all of you at Crate are doing an amazing job on Grim Dawn.
OMG!! Earlier this year!!!